There are many situations in which an object must be retrieved from a fluid. The object may have fallen into a fluid by accident or may have been purposely submerged in a fluid for cleaning. For example, ultrasonic jewelry cleaners enjoy widespread use by professional jewelers. However, problems occur when an individual gemstone becomes dislodged from its setting while in the cleaner. The gemstone is extremely difficult to locate and retrieve due to the murkiness and the heat of the cleaning fluid used in the cleaner. In order to retrieve the gemstone, one must typically go through the time consuming task of straining the cleaning fluid to retrieve the loose gemstone. For other loose objects, the availability of straining the fluid may be not only impractical, but actually impossible, depending upon the environment of the fluid.
There have been a myriad of attempts in the prior art to develop a device that can easily and simply retrieve an object that is submerged in a fluid. Unfortunately, these devices are overly complex and often require many attempts to successfully retrieve the object from the fluid. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,374,092 to Salinas describes a device for retrieving a gemstone that is submerged in a cleaning solution. The user is required to locate the gemstone using the sighting shaft and then must retrieve the gemstone using attached tweezers. Unfortunately, it is difficult for a user to effectively grasp the gemstone between the arms of the tweezers.
Therefore, there is a need for a simple and effective device for retrieving an object from a fluid, which does not require the user to make numerous attempts.